Master the Mainframe Contest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Master the Mainframe contest was a mainframe programming challenge organized annually by IBM Academic Initiative System z.[1]
Originally catering to students attending North American institutions of higher learning (US and Canada, excluding Quebec), the contest ran in as many as 30 countries across the globe.[2] The goal of the contest was to provide students with the opportunity to experience working with mainframes.[3] The contest was created in part to increase the number of mainframe skilled individuals in the computing workforce.[4]
Contest
For North America, the contest typically started during the Fall semester and run until the end of December. It was separated into 3 parts, with each part increasing in complexity. Part 1 introduced the basic aspects necessary to get started with mainframe technologies and required minimal time to complete. Part 2 involved more steps for each task and usually took a day or so to accomplish. The first 60 winners of Part 2 received monetary prizes in recognition of their achievement. Part 3 was more in depth, involving multiple programming challenges such as COBOL, REXX, JCL, etc. (depending on the questions set for the year's challenge).[5]